Ren stopped at the corner of a street that seed to be the limit of a relatively safe distance for approaching the march. He studied the horizon above the houses where dust and occasional mana flashes could be seen marking the position of Kharzan’s army march.
After thinking for a mont about his next course of action...
"We could use a look from an elevated place," he murmured, squinting his eyes. Not having any beast among the four of them that could fly very high was a problem.
’Maybe we can throw you very high?’ ’don’t even think about it!’
"Then..." Ren looked at the girls, "without knowing exactly how things are, we shouldn’t advance further. The right mont for us to enter is when the fighting ends and the infected are down..."
Rushing into active combat would accomplish nothing except getting them killed.
"So any ideas of a good high place?"
"How high do you need?" Larissa asked, following his gaze toward the distant chaos.
"High enough to see the main street the Goldcrest soldiers are marching on," Ren turned toward the girls. "Do you know any elevated place near here we can use?"
From a high vantage point, they could assess the battlefield situation, identify safe approach routes, and ti their intervention perfectly.
All three began thinking, ntally evaluating the buildings in the area.
"The clock tower would be an option," Luna suggested, pointing west. "But it’s sowhat far and visibility wouldn’t be so good from that angle."
"What about residential buildings?" Liora proposed. "So have five or six floors..."
"Not high enough," Larissa shook her head. "Besides, almost everything is closed due to curfew. Although I suppose jumping up to so tower would be costly but possible."
Ren frowned, trying to rember the city’s topography from his previous visits to the comrcial center. But he was by no ans an expert in non-biological formations he hadn’t visited more than once...
His knowledge of beast biology was encyclopedic, but urban architecture remained frustratingly mysterious.
"Wait," Larissa suddenly brightened. "What about the garden tower of Sky Tasty company?"
The suggestion ca with the kind of enthusiasm that indicated she’d found a real solution rather than another compromise option.
"Sky Tasty?" Ren raised an eyebrow.
The na sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it... when he might have heard it before in the academy. Comrcial enterprises weren’t exactly his biggest interest either...
’Maybe Finch gibberish?’
"That expensive food company," Liora explained with a grimace of disgust. "They have vertical harvest gardens, and this one has the vertical record of the entire city."
Her Will o’ Wisp dimd slightly, as if the spirit shared her distaste for overpriced comrcial ventures that prioritized promotion over substance.
Ren nodded slowly, rembering having seen so of those vertical gardens during his ’half-year break visit’ to the comrcial center, but he didn’t know there were vegetable towers even bigger than those.
"Apparently the owners use the top of their towers as advertisent," Larissa continued. "They hire good earth elentals to create super strong foundations so they can build higher than the competition."
The scale of so comrcial operations in the city continued to surprise him. The resources invested in marketing stunts like those seed almost wasteful when people were struggling in places similar to his old ho...
But Ren had to admit it was providing them with exactly the resource they needed.
"Sounds unnecessary," Ren said.
"It is, and they’re more expensive than normal food," Liora added with evident irritation in her voice. "My opinion is they taste the sa as other products and are only stupidly expensive. Pure marketing indeed..."
Luna shrugged. "Well, at least their tower serves us now."
Sotis the wasteful excesses of the wealthy created unexpected benefits for those who needed them. It was a small irony in a world full of larger injustices.
"Where is it?" Ren asked.
"About ten blocks east," Larissa pointed in the direction with a view obstructed by so sizable buildings. "We should be able to get there without problems."
The route would take them slightly closer to the combat zone, but still within what appeared to be a relatively safe periter based on their current mana observations.
The group headed toward the Sky Tasty tower, navigating through empty streets. The proximity of the fight had effectively emptied this evacuated area much more than others that were only under curfew.
When they finally reached the base of the tower, Ren was surprised by the building’s height. It was indeed taller than the other gardens he had seen in the city, a slender but imposing structure that rose toward the sky like a green needle.
The elental engineering required to make such a structure was impressive, even if the purpose seed frivolous.
"The climb is that spiral staircase," Larissa observed, pointing to the entrance. "It will help us save mana instead of making all the jumps we would have had to use to reach the clock tower roof."
These considerations were important. Every bit of magical energy they conserved now might be crucial for their actual mission once they reached the battlefield.
"And the courtyard is clear due to the evacuation," Luna added, sniffing the surroundings. "Besides, it’s not harvest ti, so there shouldn’t be workers unless they’re crazy about danger like a certain boy..."
Her enhanced senses could detect the absence of human activity, providing another layer of security for their infiltration.
"Perfect," Ren murmured while ignoring the comnt and approaching the entrance. "Although I can’t sense anyone’s mana signature at the top... it seems strange to that there’s no one from either army watching from such an advantageous visibility point."
"Maybe the flyers see it as unnecessary," Larissa suggested. "With all the aerial patrols they must have..."
The main door was locked, but the locks in this part of the city were more about elegance and a culturally enough ’please respect the property’ than truly secure. The children climbed over the walls, and within minutes they were inside.
The spiral staircase extended upward, winding around the tower’s interior between levels of suspended hydroponic gardens. The sll of damp earth and growing plants filled the air, creating a strange contrast with the war tension they had been breathing for hours.
"This is going to be so exercise," Larissa murmured after climbing the first ten floors.
Her breathing was already showing the strain, despite her enhanced physical capabilities from her beasts. The tower was significantly taller than it had appeared from the ground.
"At least it’s better than using mana," Ren responded, though he still couldn’t feel the effort in his legs. But he knew the ring and being thin and small gave him an advantage in this type of effort. Lin’s face flashed through his mind for an instant.
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